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For the first time since the controversy broke, Elizabeth Warren acknowledged last night that she did tell Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania she was Native American. Previously, Warren had only copped to identifying herself as a minority in a legal directory. A campaign official says she did not address questions about the universities before now because she had forgotten the details. Still, she insists race had nothing to do with her recruitment or hiring by the Ivy League schools, the Boston Globe reports.

"At some point after I was hired by them, I … provided that information to the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard," she said in a statement. "My Native American heritage is part of who I am, I’m proud of it, and I have been open about it." Harvard's law school started reporting a Native American female professor in its ranks during the first year Warren worked there, stopped reporting such a professor while she did not work there, and listed one again when she returned. But two people involved in her recruitment say they were not aware of her heritage when they hired her. Warren has not met any of the federal standards defining herself as a Native American or offered any evidence of her heritage, the Globe notes.

"Harris points out that "Native Americans are growing in numbers, not because of a high birth rate, but because many Americans are discovering unknown native ancestors written in their DNA." I doubt the same discovery about African American blood is causing that recorded population to increase. Given the regularity with which white Americans impregnated slaves in order, among other reasons, to increase their "property" (and then going on, in some cases, to sell their own children), and again, given the ability of many light-skinned "black" Americans to pass into white society -- given these and other factors, I would think that DNA tests for whites probably turn up more African American than Native American blood. And yet, few white people who find black blood probably go on to proclaim their black ancestry, while many who find Native American blood do go on to proclaim that ancestry." From the blog: Stuff white people do... claim they have native american blood http://stuffwhitepeopledo.blogspot.com/2009/06/claim-they-have-native-american-blood.html